Ceramics are often used in applications that require materials with high dielectric constants, such as in capacitors and energy storage devices. Conventional ceramic materials, however, are typically brittle and susceptible to fracturing under tensile and torsion stresses. Additionally, conventional ceramic materials exhibit a low dielectric strength, limiting their application in high voltage, high power, or high energy storage systems.
Existing efforts to compensate for the inherent brittle nature and low dielectric strength of ceramic material rely on incorporating epoxies or other polymeric macromolecules into a mixture with high dielectric constant ceramic particles. Existing efforts however, do not achieve the ceramic particle packing fraction required to achieve a high effective dielectric constant for the composite. The current efforts also produce composites containing voids, which decrease the dielectric constant and the dielectric strength of the composite.
Therefore, there remains a need for dielectric materials having high dielectric constants at a range of high frequencies that also possess a high dielectric strength and have robust mechanical properties and strengths.